


An Iridescent City

by SerpentineTraveler



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter/Funhaus RPF
Genre: Kings AU, inconsistent tense use, minecraft au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-23
Updated: 2018-05-25
Packaged: 2018-11-17 14:16:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 3,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11276991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SerpentineTraveler/pseuds/SerpentineTraveler
Summary: This world is not one that inspired much trust.For the citizens, less so, for their particular lives are finite. Theirs will end, largely unremarkably, and what was done will be forgiven and then forgotten before being reborn into the universe.The Six though. The Six who may sit on the throne. They are a different story altogether.They remember.  They are not the same as the average citizen, as much as the appear so. The six are the closest to immortal as they can get.The throne and the crown. Those six who bear those crowns, but only one reigns at once.But things are changing.  And not even the Six understand.  The red crown's tether to the red king is fading, the crown's form flickering, shifting. Only the Red King feels what is happening.





	1. Prologue

The First. The first was benevolent, if incompetent. Happy, but tired. Often seemed worn out, frayed at the edges.

The Second. Before he changed. Perhaps his darker tendencies shined through, but they were never taken seriously. What a mistake that was.

The Third. Perhaps the most competent at any given task. Taking to any skill with remarkable vigor, though perhaps too inexperienced, too excited for the throne at that point.

The Fourth. Built for battle; quick to rage. A fierce loyalty, if rough on the surface. A good ally, passionate and determined.

The Fifth. Clumsy, unexpected. But surprisingly prepared. Creator of the Annual Trials. 

The Architect. He has ever held the throne, nor has he desired to. He is happiest building for the Denizens of the city.

The Chemist. The newcomer, and has yet to try his competence for the leadership. But does he want to?


	2. On the Outskirts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An introduction.

The tree stood on the outskirts of the main city. Though "stood" may not be the right word for it; as it was not in the ground. It, and the patch of ground it trapped in its roots, _floated_. Hundreds of feet in the air.

The tree itself seemed to radiate power and energy; for those who could sense it. Though wieldable magic was long since forgotten; as the ability was rare even at the beginning when magic was at its peak, it had since declined even further, the existence of magic in the world was respected but feared.

The island supported small, seemingly ordinary house, made of stone. Inside, it was a chaotic mess of books and miscellaneous objects of various origins and stability. 

With a small, unmade bed shoved into the corner, most of the space was utilized as a library, complete with an enchanting table. It had a bar lining the longest wall, with many chests of many sizes and colors stowed underneath; with a chair tucked away at the end farthest from the entry. 

The upper level was mostly windows; and unfiltered sunlight would stream through, unfettered by neighboring buildings as most homes did in the city.

This was the home of one of the Six. And he'd had a very, very long time to form it to his own tastes. This was the home of the trickster king, the Fifth. The magic user.

The Fifth stood outside with his head tilted up to the sky; the sun warming his skin. He wore a well worn set of adventurers clothes, complete with dyed leather armor. Completing the look, was the a creeper pelt overtop it all. 

As the wind shifted, he felt the arrival of one sure to alter the way of life for the Six.

"Well, this should be... _interesting_...."


	3. Near but...Not

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Meet the Second.

In contrast to the isolated home of the Fifth, the Second lived much nearer to the city center.

It appeared innocent enough. Like any other house on the block. But it hid a secret within.

The main level was rather uninteresting, a table and chairs tucked into a corner, and a couple bookshelves, complete with a comfy chair in another. There were paintings hung neatly around the room, and a few decently sized windows. One of the more dramatic pieces included the skull of a bull, kept impeccably free of dust and out of direct sunlight.

The loft area had a neatly made bed and a few matching chests. A few books stacked on the bedside table, and should one decide to open them, one might find plays and dramas that with neatly written annotations squished into the margins.

Over all, a cozy and welcoming home, but it had a air of wrongness about it. Tangible enough that the people of Achievement City avoided the place, without being able to place why they felt such dissonance radiating from within.

In the hidden basement, there was an expansive laboratory, complete with mysterious bubbling liquids, and shelves upon shelves of different ingredients and materials. As well a many notebooks with research unseen by any other living being, of concepts to ghastly for anyone else to even consider, 

The Second, at this point, could be found out back, in the farm area. He’d since removed most of his fancy outfit, now clad only in a pair of work pants and and a plain shirt in contrast to his usual kilt and and vest ensemble. 

He acted as the town breeder, and if one needed to purchase an animal or two, he could provide. Though once a breeding pair was purchased, citizens tended to purchase between themselves, or lend animals to each other to breed instead of interacting with the Second. 

And if any odd ingredient was needed, for a significant fee he could procure such items. But it was only ever in desperation, for he was not one to cross, and oft made people uncomfortable. It was the goal of many to keep as far from the man as possible. 

But despite his...distance, alienation...from the rest of the community, he knew far more about the other citizens than they were comfortable with.


	4. Rapunzel, Rapunzel....

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Meeting the First.

The First, one of the Founders, lived in the most overly grand construction in Achievement City. Nicknamed the Monolith, the castle was home to the tallest tower in the city and peripheral villages. It is widely believed that, at one point, the tower was the only part of the castle that existed, and the rest was added on by someone else. And while the people were very observant, the magicks at work, present since the very creation of Achievement City, kept the truth hidden. That at one point in time, the city had consisted only of the main square and the forgotten Six had all lived around it.

The First in the Monolith, the Second in a small house next door to it. The Third in a dirt hovel with a single rose, the Fourth, in a wooden cabin lined with furnaces, and the Fifth in a cobblestone building tucked into the corner, with art on every surface and a garden on the roof. The Architect had had a wooden home on stilts above a mine shaft.

In the current era, Achievement City was nearly unrecognizable. The wooden buildings long since burned and the dirt ones razed to make way for expansions to the castle. The Sorcerers home had been converted to a painters guild; the cobblestone had been too strong to destroy even without the lingering magicks keeping it standing. The once impressive logo in the city square had been destroyed by the Founders as the last of the Six, had moved away. Destroying the evidence of their longevity as they changed their lives up, once again.

Now, the Monolith itself was kept seemingly unoccupied, as the current ruling committee could not find the entrance, and propositions to _make_ an entrance failed again and again. The voting members finding themselves mysteriously confused at why they wanted to get into the tower in the first place, when it came time to vote.

In truth, there was a spell woven into the cobblestone, dissuading anyone from damaging it, as well as hiding the entrances. And it was here the First still dwelled, having been unable to abandon his creation. But with a little help from Gavin, he was able to stay where he was. Unnoticed and unbothered.  


While the tower had many levels, mostly were empty. A couple levels had a storage chest or two, one even a rarely used portal. It was the top most levels that the First resided in. Even those floors were sparsely decorated, as the Founders had spent more time personalizing the other homes, and he himself was not too concerned with appearances. Though if he were more honest, and if anyone were to ask, he might reveal that the construction of the massive tower was too much and he and Gavin were too exhausted to do much else to it.

There was only one item of interest in the room. There stood an armor stand to the side of the window with moss green dyed leather armor with gold reinforcements on the chest, shins, and forearms, as well as a gold helmet, kept clean of dust and often checked that it was battle ready. 

Despite its lack of decoration, the First was comfortable there. The it had a large bed with luxurious (not to mention _expensive_ ) duvets, with large windows. A few chests and cupboards carelessly placed in a shadowed corner, forgotten and dusty. A small bookshelf, strategically placed near the windows but out of direct sunlight, stacked with journals filled with the history no one would ever know beyond himself and his small band of friends, who’d been long since scattered to the edges of the city.

It wasn’t unique to him, keeping journals. Most of the _Unsterblich_ did, to varying levels of detail and consistency. The fear that, in their extended lives, they would forget their own beginnings.

It was in front of the windows, that the First spent most of his time. Windows that looked out over the city he had built, and the one which had long forgotten him. He mostly wore plain clothes of green and gold coloring, opting for comfort over fashion. He would argue that there was no point to dressing up when there was no one around to impress.

He missed people. He missed _his_ people. But no matter how long he spent looking over the city, he didn’t know how to fix it. He didn’t understand how everything had fallen apart in the first place, let alone how to go about fixing it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sort of winging this as I go a long and I tend to write and post in a burst of creativity...unfortunately that means I'm very inconsistent in terms of any sort of posting schedule...sorry! I hope you stick with me though!
> 
> side note! If you want to chat about this, or about anything really, you can drop me an ask/message on tumblr! My username is violet-eyed-serpent !


	5. Portraits of a Lost Era

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Meet the Architect.

Just off the main square stood the home and office of the city architect. 

Yes, while it's true the city was first established by the Founders; the main pavilion and the buildings that once surrounded it were built by them personally, the residential areas of Achievement City were designed by him. Of course, much of the credit and proof of such had been “lost” in the time passed.

Still active in the world of architecture and home construction, yet he kept himself squirreled away in the back of his shop. Repair requests and plan commissions were to be left in a box at the front desk, and payment left in a lock box with a compulsion spell on it. 

The Fifth and his magic, it seemed, has been essential to the way of life of the _unsterblich _. He may have been the only one who kept up with the others on a regular basis. The only one who was able to shroud his own presence from the eyes of humanity. A potentially overly paranoid action, since the Kings and their Court were no longer a part of recent memory, but it had become part of habit. They were not even sure if they would mesh as well as they once had. Though before their own greed or exhaustion had gotten the best of them; tearing down the system that had been built.__

__The Architect kept a small garden behind his dwelling and that kept him going. A social being, he turned his attentions to his plants; his green thumb creating a small forest out of his backyard. He had a tendency for talking to himself or his plants, and a habit of adopting all the stray cats that wandered in. Not all stayed, and he outlived many of them, but he enjoyed caring for each and every one of them._ _

__His journals were mostly filled with old sketches; of memories and places he’d been. He worked only in pen and pencil, with an eraser and ruler quick at hand. But graphite was all he needed to capture the moment. While his career meant endless buildings, he truly enjoyed trying to capture faces and emotion. An endless number of the notebooks containing drawings of the Kings and their Courts. Those are the most worn pages. He fears forgetting what they look like, it had been a good long while since he had seen any of the other _unsterblich _, not even the Fifth, for he came and renewed his spellwork like a ghost. He never saw the man, he came and went when the Architect was out.___ _

____He looked through the books often, making a mental note to talk to the Fifth for a preservation spell. A career of designing crafted an above average art skill, even if they tended to be more angular than necessarily realistic. He just made that his style, and it didn't matter anyway.  
____

___No one would ever see them._ _ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry it's been an AGE, but college classes have started back up and I'm super busy, and trying to balance my extracurricular activities and a social life and not fail classes is difficult.


	6. Battle Worn

The fourth split his time between adventuring and fulfilling his chosen career: blacksmithing. He had always been the shortest tempered one of the group and the bitter years since the group had last been united had done nothing to temper that flame. He’d since turned to taking out his aggression on shaping metal and managing the mobs that had become ever more populous on the city fringes. 

He’d adopted a similar system as the Architect; leaving a box upon the front counter for orders and payments. It was better that way, that the local people see as little of the Court as possible, as they never aged, and that would create suspicion. 

The building was two stories; its main level was the main workspace, with the smeltery and anvil and assorted furnaces, as well as a rack of hammers and files set against a far wall. The basement had assorted shelving and chests strewn about. It acted as the storage area though it had a small cot tucked into the far corner, but the lack of use was evident. The Blacksmith had once lived in a wooden cottage on the city square, but it had but since burned, and he had never felt settled in his new location. Instead, he wandered, for days at a time, carrying only the bare minimum, a bedroll and tent, some flint and steel, and his beloved sword. 

The sword was the product of hours and hours of work between himself and the local magic man, the Fifth. It was early on, when they were all just beginning to grow accustomed to each other, just beginning to understand what had been done to them when they had discovered the Chest deep inside the mines, and against all gut feelings, broken open. 

They had all been ordinary humans once, but that was before the Chest. They had freed a great power, the Six of them, freed a curse that would tie them together and then tear them apart.

The Fifth was prone to accidental busts of magic as a result of strong emotion, and they had used the release of that power, the sheer power without any guiding intention, which had been a result of sheer rage. A rare occurrence, the Fifth had normally be the cause of such outbursts, never the subject. The two had prepared for such a moment, though, carried the unfinished sword with them always, in the hopes that the next time the magic turned outwards, it would latch on to the sword. And it did, oh man it did. The sword now bequeathed the user with increased battle instincts, something that had saved the warrior’s hide many times in the years that passed.

Of course, none of the Six could truly die. They could be killed, and they could feel the pain of dying, but they would never stay dead, no matter how much they might want to. Their bodies would disintegrate, along with what they were carrying, and they would reform, at one point it had meant reappearing at some random place in the world. With the passage of time, years were spent researching this phenomenon, mostly by the Fifth and the Second, and together they had created a spell that tied Remergance to a specific item, which would then be stored wherever was desirable.

This aspect became increasingly valuable for the Warrior king, who took to monster hunting to work through his aggressions and sometimes they would get the best of him.


	7. Shifting, Shuddering, Shattered

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Third is introduced and a things change.

The Third, now the third was a special case, he'd felt a shift in the curse, and had begun to drift away from the group. The act likely creating the first fissures in the group.

He had always lived in a modest space, even if he had more expensive tastes in other aspects of his life. His dwelling had been a building of dirt and mud, just a bed and a chest, a cauldron of water in the corner. When he'd purchased the thing and lugged it into place he'd intended to learn potion making but it ended up more as a water dish for the ocelot who'd made itself comfortable and he'd not had the heart to evict. In the end he’d lost interest in potion making and the thing had been left in its corner for all the years up until the present. The cat was long gone, but the Red King kept the stand in memory.

The Third sat on the edge of the bed, staring down into the box on his lap. Set into it, was an elaborate crown, gold with a red cap. What Ray was interested in, and had been keeping note of for a while now, was that the form of the crown was shifting, it was unstable. When he had first noticed, he had considered alerting the group, but decided against it, the shifting was only slight, then, but it had only grown more and more drastic. Now, it was more often a simple circlet, made of silver that shone technicolor under direct sunlight instead of the gold showpiece it had been for the Third’s reign.

When he’d worked out the implications of the shuddering crown, he’d begun to distance himself in earnest, and then the Royal Court had started to lose structure. The residents of Achievement City had begun to push for a more representative government and the Court had been more than happy to oblige, it left fewer responsibilities for them to handle. But as time went on, the Court had less and less to do, and had gotten bored. They began going on solo adventures He grew more and more stifled by this life, and it seemed the magic of the throne and the crowns agreed.

It was with a guilty sort of hope blooming in his chest as he shut the box for the last time. The Magic understood the act as his final decision, and the Red King felt something shift deep within himself. Somehow he knew, that he would no longer reform, that this was his final chance to live his life out as he wanted.

He constructed a secret room, guided by instinct and the echo of the magic that had once lived within him. He stored the crown in this room, as well as a note to whoever was cursed to discover it. He wrote an additional note bidding farewell to the others in the Royal Court, figuring that Gavin would come by sooner or later and find the note. He had always been one of the more social members of the group, flitting from person to person, leaving before he became overwhelming. He also did the most work, in some ways, to maintain this way of life, staying under the radar of mortal history.

He left the note folded on his bed and stood and gathered his things. As he began his trek out of the city, he looked over what he had helped form and smiled upon it. He was proud of what he had created with his friends. 

And with that thought, the Red King disappeared into the woods, never to return, excited to forge a new, final adventure.


End file.
